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That's not a very relevant study, since you (and Ames) are just guessing at the motive. Many people are consciously racist, not in a "I want them all lynched"

by orbitur 12y ago

That's not a very relevant study, since you (and Ames) are just guessing at the motive. Many people are consciously racist, not in a "I want them all lynched" way, but in a "meh, I'd rather not meet with a black guy, probably a waste of time" way. Of course they aren't going to admit that sort of bias. And again, you're just guessing at what happened. There is indeed subconscious bias, and it rears its ugly head when we're observing people's mannerisms, their speech, their attractiveness, and yes, their skin color. But just looking at names on a resume, I'd argue the decision of calling someone back, based on the stereotypical application of their first name, is just a conscious bias.

UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
It isn't "a study," It is an article summarizing a lot of the data on subconscious bias as it relates to race, specifically white/black in the US. If you read it you'd know that. Huh? I never guessed that anything happened or guessing at any motives of anyone...? The same resume experiment has been tested with male/female names as well.
- vidarh 12y ago
  You wrote "There is a TON of data out there demonstrating we all have subconscious bias." Is that not guessing at motives (or the lack of a motive, I suppose)? The point the above commenter made is that the CV example does not demonstrate subconscious bias. The researcher in question said they were "probably unaware", and said that "if you ask someone on the hiring committee", implying that they did not even try to measure whether or not this bias was conscious or not, but that they assume a lot of it was subconscious. It's quite possible - even likely - they're right about that, but from the description it does not sound like that study is a good basis for demonstrating subconscious basis. > The same resume experiment has been tested with male/female names as well. Many people openly admit to biases against females in certain jobs, so that too is a bad example for establishing subconscious bias. I agree with you that there is a lot of subconscious bias (and the article has much better examples, such as the knife example where there's no motive for people to pick the wrong person), but it's not clear that the CV example demonstrates subconscious bias. It certainly does demonstrate bias though.
  - UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
    Your missing the forest for the trees. Don't get hung up on one example I quoted because I found it interesting.

by orbitur 12y ago

UrMomReadsHN 12y ago

It isn't "a study," It is an article summarizing a lot of the data on subconscious bias as it relates to race, specifically white/black in the US. If you read it you'd know that. Huh? I never guessed that anything happened or guessing at any motives of anyone...? The same resume experiment has been tested with male/female names as well.

vidarh 12y ago
You wrote "There is a TON of data out there demonstrating we all have subconscious bias." Is that not guessing at motives (or the lack of a motive, I suppose)? The point the above commenter made is that the CV example does not demonstrate subconscious bias. The researcher in question said they were "probably unaware", and said that "if you ask someone on the hiring committee", implying that they did not even try to measure whether or not this bias was conscious or not, but that they assume a lot of it was subconscious. It's quite possible - even likely - they're right about that, but from the description it does not sound like that study is a good basis for demonstrating subconscious basis. > The same resume experiment has been tested with male/female names as well. Many people openly admit to biases against females in certain jobs, so that too is a bad example for establishing subconscious bias. I agree with you that there is a lot of subconscious bias (and the article has much better examples, such as the knife example where there's no motive for people to pick the wrong person), but it's not clear that the CV example demonstrates subconscious bias. It certainly does demonstrate bias though.
- UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
  Your missing the forest for the trees. Don't get hung up on one example I quoted because I found it interesting.